This is my first translation into English. I beg your mercy…
The Spanish version is available at /s/11695022/1/
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Skip Beat, much to my regret …
BALM
He woke with a scream in his throat that never came out.
Drops of cold sweat glowed on his skin as his heart was struggling to regain its regular rhythm. He lay back on the bed, looking for the warmth of the body next to him. She was still sleeping, oblivious to his nightmares. He shaped his body to hers, sleeping echo of peaceful dreams, and he hugged her.
Only then did he let out the air full of fear from his lungs.
The darkness could go around him, stalking, it could fill his heart with fear and his soul with shadows, but it couldn't catch him. Because he was with Kyoko.
Close to Kyoko, the darkness steps back and it was kept inside the limits of his dreadful dreams, and the blackness of his life seemed to fill up with light in front of Kyoko.
Always his talisman, his protective amulet... His balm against nightmares.
His balm to heal the broken soul of the person he once was.
He breathes against the skin of her neck, filling himself with her scent; he puts his arm under her shoulders and brings her closer next to him, adjusting Kyoko to the curve of his torso. Then, he leaves a light kiss, almost without touching, on her hair, whispering an "I love you" that only the night air can listen, and at last he closes his eyes.
You can't keep doing this to Kyoko...
At some point in the morning, she will wake up before him and will leave his apartment, taking all her stuff. As if she had never been here.
This is wrong…
They never talk about it.
They never talk about anything.
She arrives late at night, after finishing her jobs and homework, when the couple of the Darumaya thinks of her asleep in her room. She goes into the bathroom, puts on her pajamas and then lies down on the bed. On his bed.
He gives two minutes for her to pretend to be asleep and then he does the same.
She feels the mattress sagging under his weight, and how he places himself behind her, putting his arm around her. Then, she feels his breath on her, burying his face in her hair and slowly, his breathing gets soft until he finally falls asleep.
It will take Kyoko more time to fall asleep. Sometimes, she feels remorse because a girl like her shouldn't be doing this. Sleeping with a man in the same bed, a man who is nothing to her… What does that say about her? Not even a twisted definition of kohai would serve as an excuse.
Truth to be told, any sense of decency was gone long ago. Just when the last lock of the box of her heart was opened. He needed her, and for heaven's sake, if sleeping with him was the price to pay for him to keep his sanity, Mogami Kyoko gladly would pay it. Because she loves him. As simple as that.
Because he doesn't know that Kyoko has been putting together the pieces of the story of his life. Shouts and whispered words in agonizing dreams that make her heart flinch. And always the same name... Rick.
All this began that night when his spirit was invaded by the fear of becoming that one who was playing for the cameras. BJ. Blood froze in his veins. The cold got into his bones. The color drained from his skin. He was reaching him, BJ was catching him... Always he would be the murderer that smiles while playing with his victim. Forever. Smiling as he takes a life.
That was the first time he tried to kill Murasame.
When he awoke, she wasn't there and the ghosts of his past caught up with him. The god of death mingled into his flesh, melting it, liquefying it with a burning cold that was killing him, as guilt and remorse gnawed at his guts. And that Kuon from whom he was running away for more than five years, returned to stain his hands again with blood.
The Kuon who killed Rick.
Only Kyoko gave him the peace of sleep that night. She embraced the specter who greeted her at that hotel corridor not realizing that she took him away from the abyss that devoured him.
She held the nightmares at bay.
That was the first night they slept together.
At least he did.
Soon it became a habit for Cain not to be able to sleep without his little sister in his arms.
They met at LME and greeted each other as usual, as if they didn't met for days. As if they hadn't woken up in the same bed hours earlier.
They pretend… He pretends he's not taking advantage of her for not get crazy and she pretends she doesn't notice. Both of them pretend that this is something that two weird siblings as Heel ones would do.
But when Setsu returned to England and Cain was left alone again, with his heart torn by lonely nights and monsters from the darkness who wanted to drag him to the abyss, Tsuruga Ren's eyes were filled with dark circles and blue shadows...
And Kyoko, the girl in love that protected and hid her own love, she knew that Ren was fighting a battle every night against the creatures that inhabited his dreams and memories. And once again, she forgot herself for the sake of another. She forgot what the press would do with her if they'd get to know, and one night, after dinner, she couldn't leave him alone. The weight of past faults filled the eyes of the man she loved with sadness and sorrow and they stole him his sleep, his peace and his sanity...
She asked him for a T-shirt and shorts. He gave her his clothes, with his heart jumping into his chest for having her one more night and with some embarrassment because of the twisted sense of obligation by which she was doing this.
Because she was doing it for her senpai. Of course.
Since then, it's Kyoko who is sleeping in his bed. Kyoko and not Setsu. His Kyoko. His sweet Kyoko, night after night, was rescuing him from the clutches of guilt, from the monster he should have been. There are neither excuses nor roles to play. Not anymore. Kyoko and Kuon.
Because he no longer hides his contact lenses. He shows to her a part of who he really is. And Kyoko is still there... Bright wide eyes in wonder... But she doesn't go... A green-eyed Tsuruga Ren is hugging a girl who should escape from him, seeing the kind of eyesore that he really is. However, she is still there and lies with him, night after night... His Kyoko, who brings peace and light with her.
Whenever she wakes up with his arms around her, hugging her as if he were to lose her, their tangled legs and hands, his and hers, on places where they should not be. Her cheeks burn in blush when she begins the slow and stealthy daily process to disentangle herself from him, because she knows that this is wrong. This is not good for any of them.
But he needs her.
And that's enough for her.
And one day on the far beaches of Guam, a girl meets a fairy prince getting out of the ocean. "Kyoko-chan", he says. And she knows he's Corn, her Corn. But the fear she sees in his green eyes is just the same one as she sees in Ren's every time he has tried to tell her about the ghosts that haunt him.
And that's when everything fits where it should be.
Her Corn is Ren. Ren is Corn. Always at her side... Always taking care of her, protecting her... With another name, with other eyes, but her Corn. Her broken prince, wingless, torn by tragedies which keep him chained like legendary curses which haunt him and which not let him live the life that belongs to him.
And once and for all, Kuon tells the truth. And he tells her the story of that boy by the river who grew up to become the murderer of his best friend and to turn into a lie with brown eyes. He is afraid. It's a horrible fear that Kyoko condemns him to the banishment from her life. To live a life without her...
But in her eyes, Kyoko's, there is no hate, no. They shine like never before, reflecting the sunlight of the southern islands, with something that Kuon can't put a name to. She walks closer, taking his hands and she takes them to her lips. She kisses them. And Kuon represses a wavering gasp, because that kiss exonerates him. It releases his shoulders and his soul from the weight of guilt and lies. This kiss reminds him that the boy of that summer still stays alive, when he was still innocent and blameless. It reminds him he is still that Kuon. That kiss tells that Kyoko doesn't hate him. And that there are no masks beside her. Only him.
And then, with his heart racing, Corn flies for her. And the beach is full of flips and somersaults like as children. And she laughs. She laughs just like she laughed back then. Cheerful and happy to have her prince at her side. And with his breath faltering by laughter, the "I love you" that nights always choked, finally comes out of his mouth. And she, only because of her trembling voice, remains silent and runs to throw herself into his arms.
Two broken creatures, broken by life, destined to meet again and again. And as balm in love, two souls destined to love and to heal each other's hearts.
As it should be.